The future comes closer and closer and closer and then rushes past you, falling away into the distance. Claude was born on a dark, beautiful autumn day, wrinkled like a limp goblin. He was born sleepy and with a concerningly low heart rate, and soon he was lying on his side in a little cart in the newborn intensive care unit. He spit out his pacifier and cast off his striped hat. He was tightly swaddled like a soft rectangle or a Kit-Kat; the lights were dim and orange; the staff watched him with electronic monitors. He didn’t seem to suffer, though he shifted around from time to time. I was tempted to pet him. Then I remembered that my whole repertoire for handling small creatures came from cats. We find our way through life using whatever we have, with all the meager tricks we’ve learned, and every other moment we’re stumbling, or we’re doing it badly, or we can’t tell what we’ve gotten into. Then, later on, we will euphemistically term this our “experience.”